Trust in Medical Technology by Patients and Health Care Providers in Obstetric Work Systems

Multiple types of users (i.e. patients and care providers) have experiences with the same technologies in health care environments and may have different processes for developing trust in those technologies. The objective of this study was to assess how patients and care providers make decisions about the trustworthiness of mutually used medical technology in an obstetric work system. Using a grounded theory methodology, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 patients who had recently given birth and 12 obstetric health care providers to examine the decision-making process for developing trust in technologies used in an obstetric work system. We expected the two user groups to have similar criteria for developing trust in the technologies, though we found patients and physicians differed in processes for developing trust. Trust in care providers, the technologies' characteristics and how care providers used technology were all related to trust in medical technology for the patient participant group. Trustworthiness of the system and trust in self were related to trust in medical technology for the physician participant group. Our findings show that users with different perspectives of the system have different criteria for developing trust in medical technologies.